He stood in the entrance to the hotel. The elderly couple were walking away from him, arm-in-arm, apparently quite sure-footed on the narrow pavement. Rogerson was standing in the small car park on the other side of the street from Sandy, still in conversation with the younger woman. They were speaking quietly, and Sandy couldn’t make out what was being said. He didn’t want to get any closer. It didn’t seem to him that this was a romantic farewell. From the body language, it looked more as if a deal was being closed – some business wrapped up after an evening of negotiation. Eventually the woman got into a small hire car. Sandy made a mental note of the company and scrabbled in his pocket for a pencil to write down the registration number. But he’d changed into his smart suit and had nothing with him to write with. Before she drove off, Rogerson approached the woman and she wound down her window. Now he did raise his voice, so Sandy could hear the words. ‘So you’re clear then. You’ll do as we agreed?’
Her response was to put her foot on the pedal and to drive away as quickly as the little Fiat would let her. Rogerson stood for a moment staring after her and then got into his own car and drove back towards Lerwick.
Chapter Thirteen
Perez and Willow walked from Fran’s house, the house where Perez now lived with her daughter, to Magnus Tait’s old croft at Hillhead. It wasn’t far and despite the weather they both felt the need for fresh air and exercise. The landslide had started close to the Hillhead boundary, and Magnus’s croft was undamaged. There was traffic below them, headlights sweeping occasionally across the hill like spotlights, but the cars moved slowly through the single-lane stretch of the road and there was little noise. A stony track led up towards Magnus’s house. Perez shone his torch down at the path so that Willow could follow it, but occasionally she missed her footing and he could hear her swearing under her breath.
The house had been whitewashed only a couple of months before Magnus had suffered the stroke, and it gleamed as they approached it, a beacon to aim for through the darkness. Perez had joined the small group of local people who had volunteered to help paint it. Guilt at their previous hostility towards the old man had led to the formation of the work party. Perez thought he would have resented the sudden shift in relationship; he’d have found the visits, the delivery of home-bakes, the offers of help patronizing, but Magnus had enjoyed every minute of the day that the house had been whitewashed. He’d flirted gently with the women and joked with the men. It had been a fine evening and, when the work was done, someone had suggested an impromptu barbecue. Perez hadn’t stayed long. He’d found himself swamped with self-pity; he’d thought suddenly how much Fran would have enjoyed the event. He’d carried Cassie back to their house on his shoulders, and even when he’d got her to bed and sat alone in the late-evening sunshine, he’d fancied he could hear the laughter outside and he felt sorry for himself all over again.
Now the drizzle seeped through his jeans and Perez forced himself back to the present. The last few years he’d lived too much in the past. They’d reached the house. There was the bench made from driftwood where Magnus had sat watching the painters at work, and again in his head Perez was back on that sunny afternoon. Magnus had wanted to help but they’d told him to relax, and he’d done as he was told, just grateful for the company. He’d turned to Perez at one point: ‘It’s as though the old place has woken up after years asleep.’ No bitterness at the years of isolation, only joy for the present.
Now it felt as if the old place was sleeping again. There were no sheep on the in-bye land and the grass was brown and overgrown. No smell of peat smoke or tobacco coming from the house. Willow joined Perez on the flagstone doorstep. ‘Well, is it open?’
He tried the door. There was a simple latch and it opened immediately. The wood was a little warped and it stuck for a moment against the stone floor, but another push and they were inside. Perez felt on the rough wall for a light switch and suddenly the room was illuminated by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The place was much as he remembered. The scrubbed table under the window, the Shetland chair with its uneven drawer under the seat, the sheepskin rugs on the stone floor. It felt cold – Magnus had lit a fire every evening, even in the summer – and there was a layer of dust on the furniture.
‘Did you know him well?’ Willow moved to the ledge over the fire. The round-faced clock had stopped. Perez remembered its ticking as a background to the uncomfortable conversations he’d had with the man. The two of them sitting, face-to-face, discussing the disappearance of a child. That had been winter too, but the weather had been unusually still and there’d been snow on the ground.
‘I arrested him once.’
Perhaps something in his voice told her that the idea still disturbed him, or perhaps she knew all about that case, because she didn’t follow it up with a further question.
‘So we’re assuming that Magnus must have had the keys to Tain and we want to know if they’re still here.’ Her voice was brisk and cheerful. He wondered if she’d ever been sad – so sad that nothing in the world outside her head mattered. Then he thought he was being self-indulgent; what his first wife Sarah had called emotionally incontinent. Perhaps Willow was just better at handling grief. She was a stronger and more balanced individual.
‘I think so. He was a very trusting soul. He’d have given up the keys to anyone with a reasonable explanation for wanting them. And of course he’d never met Alissandra Sechrest, so it’d be easy enough for someone to take him in.’ Perez began opening the painted wooden cupboards. Magnus had very few possessions: some pans and pots, a couple of cups, saucers and plates, sufficient cutlery for two people in a handmade wooden box. Perez thought there’d been more clutter when he’d first visited, remnants of the old man’s childhood, his mother’s belongings. Perez remembered that Magnus had donated some items to the jumble stall at the Ravenswick Sunday teas. Perhaps that had been his way of coming to terms with the past. Or maybe he’d just thought they were ugly and gathering dust and he’d wanted shot of them.
‘He’d heard Alissandra Sechrest speak, though,’ Willow said. ‘Anyone coming to see him, to collect the keys, would have had to use an American accent to be convincing.’
Perez shrugged. He thought any accent that wasn’t Shetland would have seemed strange to Magnus. And if the mysterious dark-haired woman had come here, she’d have charmed him. Magnus had remained single all his life, but he’d always had an eye for a pretty woman. ‘Anyone who watches TV from the US would probably have done well enough to fool Magnus.’
Perez moved on round the room. Willow seemed to realize this was more than a routine investigation, that Perez had a personal connection with the place, because she stood quite still and let him continue the search unhindered.
Under the sink was a galvanized bucket, a scrubbing brush, washing powder and pegs. On the other side of the room stood a large Victorian sideboard. Dark wood, engraved with florid flowers and leaves, lush vegetation that would never have grown in the islands. A prized family possession. In the drawers were the records of Magnus’s life, personal and business. Receipts for lambs sent to the slaughterhouse, the details of sales, in a sprawling hand. A savings book showing a balance of £2,500 with the Orkney and Shetland building society. Cheque books going back decades, neatly folded and fastened with elastic bands. Nothing had been removed. The distant relatives from the south who had come to bury the old man had taken the ferry back to Aberdeen on the evening of the landslide, anxious that they might be trapped in the islands by another act of nature. Shetland must have seemed a very hostile place to them. Perez had spoken to them briefly. They’d said they would come back when the weather was better, to sort out the estate. One was a businessman and one a university lecturer, and the only sense they had of the place where their grandparents had been born came from stories and legends.